I want to revisit the recent testimony of journalist Michael Shellenberger before the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. What he told members of Congress last week should be front page news. It should alarm everyone.
Shellenberger is one of the journalists Elon Musk selected to evaluate the internal operations of Twitter after he acquired the company. Shellenberger and his fellow journalists (all left-of-center liberals) were shocked by what they uncovered – a massive network of Big Government agencies working with Big Tech companies to suppress information and free speech online.
Shellenberger labeled it the "Censorship Industrial Complex," and he has continued digging into this issue. Here's what he told members of Congress last week:
"Nine months ago, I testified and provided evidence . . . about the existence of a 'Censorship Industrial Complex,' a network of government agencies . . . contractors, and Big Tech media platforms that conspired to censor ordinary Americans and elected officials alike for holding disfavored views.
"I regret to inform the subcommittee today that the scope, power, and lawbreaking of the Censorship Industrial Complex are even worse than we had realized back in March."
He went on to describe how U.S. and foreign military contractors worked with various government agencies to not just censor information online, but also to "turn sophisticated psychological operations and disinformation tactics developed abroad against the American people."
Let that sink in for a moment.
Shellenberger stated that the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) "violated the First Amendment and interfered in the [2020] election." In 2021, that same agency "undermined America's response to the COVID pandemic" by demanding that social media companies censor content they knew was "often true."
The origin of this effort dates back to the infamous White House meetings in the closing days of the Obama/Biden Administration. They were determined, as Shellenberger put it, to "create a counter-disinformation project to 'stop a repeat of 2016.'"
Of course, as we now know, the disinformation in 2016 was the Russia collusion hoax, a Clinton campaign / Deep State operation to smear Donald Trump. While it didn't succeed in getting Hillary elected, James Comey and other Deep State operatives used it to paralyze the Trump Administration for years.
The disinformation in 2020 was the claim that Hunter Biden's laptop was a Russian fake and the suppression of the truth by the Deep State was blatant election interference to hurt Donald Trump and benefit Joe Biden.
And now it's happening all over again.
The Threat To Democracy
Liberals are getting panicky. No one is buying "Bidenomics." The polls are terrible for Biden on the issues and on him personally. Meanwhile, Trump is moving up. The indictments against him haven't worked.
So, the left's new plan is two-fold: First, push Biden as a war-time president, thus the heavy emphasis on Ukraine. Why do I say that? Well, war is always an excuse to take away liberties.
After 9/11, we gave our intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies massive new powers to protect us. There were supposedly lots of safeguards, but none of them worked. (Kudos to Sens. Mike Lee and Josh Hawley for calling out the FBI's abuses and its failure to reform.)
Instead of tracking down foreign terrorists, the Biden Administration is spying on conservative churches, parents and MAGA supporters.
The left, which wanted to accommodate the Soviet Union, now says Vladimir Putin is threatening all of Europe and is interfering in our elections. But then they used the threat of Putin to falsely undermine Trump and to suppress the truth of Hunter Biden's laptop.
"National security" is always a convenient excuse to restrict civil liberties.
The second part of the left's plan is a huge propaganda campaign pushed by the Deep State to define Donald Trump as a "dictator" and his reelection is the "death of democracy." Perhaps you've noticed this theme. The left isn't exactly being subtle about it.
In unison, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNN and MSNBC are all chiming in with dire warnings about a second Trump term.
All these media outlets saying the same thing at once isn't a coincidence. This is clearly a well-planned and highly coordinated campaign to influence the election.
Trump addressed this in a speech Saturday. He took it on directly, warning that we already have a dictator – it's Joe Biden. He and his neo-Marxist allies are constantly attacking our freedoms, doing everything they accuse Trump and conservatives of planning to do.
The Biden Administration and the massive government bureaucracies it controls are working with international organizations and foreign intelligence agencies to tell you what you can eat, what appliances you can own, what you can drive, what energy you can use and what you can think and say.
At every level, our sovereignty, as a nation and as individuals, is under siege. They are wiping out whole industries and entire ways of life. The Biden/Harris regime is even demanding that we lie about fundamental issues.
And if you object, you're labeled a "domestic terrorist" and a "threat to democracy."
In my recent speeches, I have been asking everyone in the audience if they know what time it is. It's not Ronald Reagan's 1984 theme of "morning in America." It's more like George Orwell's 1984.
While claiming to defend democracy, the left is moving at breakneck speed to consolidate power. And we're rapidly running out of time to stop the neo-Marxist left and their Deep State allies from "fundamentally transforming America."
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